Lucie Gikovich helped keep a young governor named Jerry Brown on track in the 1970s

The official portraits of California’s governors remain one of the most popular features for visitors to the State Capitol Building in Sacramento. But if effectiveness in running the state were any measure, a new portrait would be added to the collection.

It would be the first portrait of a woman, Lucie Gikovich, who lost her 14-month battle against pancreatic cancer on March 11. She was 70.

True, Lucie was never elected governor. But for those of us who served in Sacramento during Jerry Brown’s first eight years as governor, there’s no doubt who was actually running the show day-to-day. It was not Brown himself, nor any top aide or member of the cabinet. It was the governor’s executive assistant, Lucie.

Those were exciting days in Sacramento. Brown was the most popular politician in the country. The governor’s office was a whirlwind of activity. Meetings on alternative energy, air quality, land-use policy or criminal justice reform lasted late into the night.

As a staffer, you never knew who you’d run into in the governor’s office: Cesar Chavez, Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, E. F. Schumacher, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw. Halfway through his first term, Brown ran for President of the United States.

With Gov. Brown’s aggressive legislative program and the activist agenda of so many strong-willed senior staffers, not to mention the pressures of a presidential campaign, the governor’s office moved at a frenetic pace.

But in the middle of it all, at her desk right outside the governor’s private office, was the unflappable, super-organized, 25-year young woman who held it all together with a steady force well beyond her years.

Gikovich caught the political bug at Immaculate Heart College, where she first met Brown. With his encouragement, upon graduation from college, she ran for City Council in Montebello under the slogan “Make the Switch, Vote Gikovich.”

After losing by only 128 votes, she pursued graduate studies at the University of San Francisco before volunteering in Brown’s 1974 gubernatorial campaign and following him to the governor’s office.

As heady as that experience was, helping steer California through the 1970s was only the first act in Gikovich’s remarkable career. When Brown left office, she was recruited by Peter Ueberroth to help organize the hugely successful 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. When he was later named Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Gikovich followed Ueberroth to New York to handle public affairs for the MLB.

In 1987, Gikovich moved to Washington, D.C., to lead the congressional and government relations office of Pacific Bell, California’s regional telephone company, where she served for 14 years. As senior vice president of PacBell, she was a major player in the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Five years later, Gikovich branched out on her own, joining attorney Dan Crane in founding the Crane Group, one of Washington and Sacramento’s leading government relations firms.

For years, in her own quiet way, Lucie was one of the most effective advocates in both Washington and Sacramento that most people never heard of. She was a friend to many and, to the end, she was a trusted advisor of Jerry Brown. He remembered her this week as “a force of love and loyalty and friendship – unmatched.”

Lucie loved life and lived it to the fullest. She loved California and her homeland of Croatia. She loved working in politics and government to get things done. She loved the homeless people in her neighborhood, all of whom she knew by name and generously supported.

Yes, one person can still make a difference in the world. Starting in Sacramento at a very young age, Lucie Gikovich did.

This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM.